You can also choose your gender from male, female and non-binary, none of which affect the game’s romance options (which are set to solidify in later episodes). This is no JRPG but the twisted genius of Scarlet Hollow is that replaying the game with different traits will, in some cases, amplify the horror.
I won’t spoil things but the game doesn’t ask you to pick two “traits” just for fun.
In fact, the horror kicks in fairly soon, halfway through the first of the two available episodes. Having to deal with cockroaches in the bathroom is a little much but Scarlet Hollow doesn’t want you to get too comfortable. Your aunt’s – now your cousin’s – mansion is the kind of crumbling, ancestral property you’d expect to see Vincent Prince lording over. You’re there for the funeral of your late aunt, and the weirdness kicks in almost immediately. More Stranger Things than Twin Peaks, Scarlet Hollow kicks off with you arriving at the titular town. You can reasonably expect the core characters, a pleasingly well-written lot, to be safe but, even two episodes into this Early Access game, I felt very nervous about this small town’s fate. And I was stunned to discover that the aforementioned demise was the direct result of my own inaction. So, when it came to replaying this narrative adventure/visual novel, I felt sure that choosing a different path would result in nothing more than a stern telling-off. Scarlet Hollow‘s art style is so gorgeous, so reminiscent of some wholesome webcomic or Dream Daddy-style dating game (even though the artist has created several horror comics) that it lures you into a false sense of security. Scarlet Hollow is about friendship, mystery and finding someone hanging by their intestines from a lamppost.Īdmittedly, I made that last one up but that’s only to disguise the actual details of Episode 1’s gruesome death.
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